Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

CRANSTON, R.I. -- Included in Governor Carcieri's proposed $7 billion 2011 state budget is a three-building shuffle at the Howard complex intended to relieve crowding at the the state's two women's prisons.

The plan is to spend $3.6 million to move the women's medium-security prisoners to the unused 174-bed reintegration center about a mile away, then move the minimum-security women prisoners to the Bernadette building next door. The probation and parole department, currently in the Bernadette building, would be shifted the minimum-security building.

Corrections Department Director A.T. Wall said the lack of space at the medium-security facility limits the department's ability to offer drug treatment and vocational programs like those at the men's units of the Adult Correctional Institutions. Add the medium-security facility's physical deterioration, he said, and the building is "a lawsuit waiting to happen."

The female prison population has been rising steadily over the past decade. In 1995, the average female ACI population was 162 women; the average hit 245 women in 2008. That's still way below the male population of the jail and five other prisons of the ACI, which held an average population of about 3,500 men last year.

Corrections has pushed for a new women's prison, Wall said, but at $50 million, it was considered too expensive. The move to the $17 million reintegration center, which is completed but has never opened, lets the department put it to use while at the same time solving the space problems for the women's prison programs, he said.

Most of the governor's $3.6 million would pay to rearrange the plumbing of the reintegration center, which was originally designed to hold male prisoners. Partitions would be installed in the open showers and toilets would replace stadium-style urinals.

 Tags  Adult Correctional Institutions Carcieri Cranston RI

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